A Warrior Born
by Bryher
Summary: Tristan reflects on peacetime. AU creative writing piece. ONESHOT ONLY.


**Title**: A Warrior Born

**Rating:** T

**Summary**: Tristan's reflections on Arthur's peacetime- AU, obviously.

**Author's Notes**: Written for a Creative Writing assignment based on Castle Hill, Knucklas, where Arthur and Guinevere allegedly married. Got me thinking about what Tristan would do. The last line, "For there are days when the living have no substance and the dead are active" comes from Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast, and for which I take no credit.

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This land has come to peace, and yet I can find no rest. United under one King and his Woad Queen, Britannia has become a place of happiness and fairness; a land renowned for wise rule and flourishing trade.

I have no place in this world.

I am a warrior born, a berserker. A knight with no mission, like driftwood in a calm sea. Watching my King and his Queen, I feel more in the cold than ever. I stand in the shade while they lounge, resplendent, in the sun.

The old days are a memory in my dreams: the drums of war, the rage of battle and the thrill of the hunt banished to a place that can only be reached in imagination and sleep. Exiled violence sorely missed: air robbed from my lungs.

I remember my first day on this island, this cold, wet isle of misery, populated by Romans and Britons alike, though the latter had no say in the matter.

The skies were grey, laden with rain and snow. The boy next to me slipped and fell in the mud, which seemed even more abundant than the never-ending chill that seeped into one's skin and into the bone: a perpetual numbness broken only by the heat of battle or a good ale. I hated it.

I missed the rolling plains of grass and endless sky of my homeland. I missed my tribe, my father and my brother. I missed the freedom that had been snatched from me by Rome and my forefathers.

We were stationed in the far north- a barren, windy outpost on Hadrian's Wall named Cilurnum. Our commander was barely a man- much like us, but there was something so beautifully terrible in his eyes, something so monstrous hidden in the green depths, that there was nothing any of us wouldn't do for him. Those eyes held more horror than the most battle-weary soldier. The burden of his office, the violence of his childhood, the cruelty of his peers. His name was Lucius Artorius Castus.

Fifteen years of servitude and little to show for it. Our presence at the Wall was compulsory, and thus we were given only a basic soldier's wage- most of which was used to repair armour, buy new weaponry, gamble and drink. Arthur led us into war, into hopelessness and into rebellion. And yet we stood by the half-Roman, willing to lay down our lives for a cause not of our own. My freedom came in battle: I take no shame in admitting that I enjoyed killing. The movement of battle becoming a dance that had no steps and no rhythm, but was greater than anything I had ever known.

After it ended, we came here, to the borderland of the Cornovii, and Arthur has his royal title placed before his name, becoming unreachable to those who once served him so faithfully.

He offered me a territory in the south- the Trinovantes, on the eastern coast. Sitting beside his Queen, resplendent in his crown and cloak, Arthur pleaded with his eyes: _do not leave me to this court._ I thought then that he had not changed, only until I realised that he meant to keep me as imprisoned as the Romans had; that my new cage would not be one of stone, but a room of gilt bars. Propriety and servants, court and lordship- a new hell into which I would be thrown, bound by a golden rope. Was I to grow fat and lazy in a long hall with my memories of battle dulled by wine? His eyes-those terrible, beautiful eyes, shone with hope and desperation. His loneliness to my anger.

I met his gaze with rage and contempt in my own: _I am not inclined to politics_, I replied.

Now, my horse picks his way up the North Road, heading back to the wilderness that I once so despised and now realise sustained me. I cannot do as my lord and commander wishes. There was once a time that I would have done anything for Lucius Artorius Castus. That time has passed. _For there are days when the living have no substance and the dead are active.

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Please review.


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